


Many Happy Returns

by LuckyDiceKirby



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-22
Updated: 2012-12-22
Packaged: 2017-11-21 23:28:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/603239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LuckyDiceKirby/pseuds/LuckyDiceKirby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose grows up, with and without her mother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Many Happy Returns

**Author's Note:**

  * For [estuary](https://archiveofourown.org/users/estuary/gifts).



When you are five, your mother tells you that you are now old enough to go to school. You have already learned to read, and don’t see what other knowledge school could possibly hold for you, but you are excited nonetheless. Isolated as your home is, you don’t often get a chance to meet other children. 

On your first day you carefully pack up your supplies in your wizard-themed backpack, and you eagerly hop into your mother’s car.

It’s a long drive, and you are one of the last children to arrive. Your mother plants a kiss on your cheek after she drops you off, which, though you wrinkle your nose at it, does make you feel a bit better. You are excited to be at school, yes, but now that you’re here, it’s all a bit overwhelming. The other kids all seem to already know each other, and you spend the first several hours of class trying to come up with a plan to be included in their conversations—there’s no real need to pay attention to the lesson, it’s nothing you don’t already know.

When it’s time for recess, you continue your planning, a strategic few feet away from the game of hopscotch a few girls have begun. It is, you are sure, the perfect distance away from them in order to make them feel compelled to ask you to join.

Your calculations turn out to be incorrect.

-

When you are six, school is not much better.

You ask your mother why, precisely, does she feel the need to live so secluded in the woods?

What you are really asking is: why aren’t I allowed to have any friends?

Your mother tells you: I have to be here for her research, I’m sorry, sweetie, if you’d like to go into town more we can, I can—

You ask if you can be homeschooled. Your mother says yes, of course, and she seems almost delighted by the idea. She says, oh honey, it’ll be so fun, and we can—

Of course, you say, I can probably just teach myself. It will be easier for everyone involved, surely. 

Your mother says, oh. She promises to buy you some books, and then she pours herself a drink at the bar. 

-

When you are seven, your mother gets you a cat as a birthday present. Perhaps it’s a delayed response to poor Jaspers’ untimely death. You take it as a passive aggressive challenge of your ability to be responsible at your young age, considering what happened to Jaspers, and so you take many pains in order to ensure that all of your new cat’s needs are taken care of by you, and not your mother. You do so as stoically as possible, and you do not thank her for the gift.

Your new cats runs away, though, is probably out somewhere, shivering in the pouring rain, and while you show no reaction to your mother, when you’re alone in your room you let yourself scream furiously into your pillow. 

Hours later, when you open the door to go make yourself some dinner, you find all of your cat’s toys in a neat little stack. 

Perhaps your mother is telling you to throw them away, you think.

You keep them, in the same corner of your room where some of Jaspers’ things still reside.

-

When you are eight, a girl named Jade pesters you on your shiny new laptop. 

Later that week, when you have begun to pester John and Dave as well, your mother comments that you look happier.

You roll your eyes, but you do mutter, under your breath, that her gift of a laptop was, in this case, quite well-timed.

You don’t see it, but your mother is smiling at you as you walk back up to your room.

-

When you are nine, your mother is so drunk she forgets your birthday. 

You don’t mention it; instead you stay in your room, quietly pestering Jade and John and Dave for the whole day, and when you wake up in the morning there is a an apology cake sitting outside your door. You know that’s what it is, because the words “Apology Cake” have been iced crookedly onto it.

You leave it there as you go about your day, but something about it keeps drawing your eye, every time you pass by your door, and it’s not until you’re putting yourself to bed later that night that you realize what it is—

Your mother actually managed to spell “Apology Cake” correctly on the first try. You’ve been the recipient of enough misspelled cards and over-the-top party banners to know what a rare occurrence that is.

You’re not quite sure how you feel about that.

-

When you are ten, your mother throws you the most ridiculous, extravagant party one could ever imagine. There are several ponies involved.

She’s obviously just trying to make up for last year. You sullenly ride one of the ponies for a few minutes before going back inside. It’s too cold for pony rides, anyway, and your mother’s apparently drunk enough now to start talking to one of them. 

You don’t feel sorry for her. You don’t. 

-

When you are eleven, your mother gets you a stuffed wizard. You think of your furtively written wizard stories, hidden upstairs in your notebook, and turn bright red at the thought of your mother ever reading them.

You do keep the wizard, though—no reason to waste a perfectly good companion, now is there?

-

When you are twelve, you ask your mother where your father is.

You figure it’s the sort of thing an intrepid, fatherless girl of your age is supposed to ask, although to be honest, the mystery has never bothered you overmuch. It just seems a bit—irrelevant, is all. 

You expect your mother to tell you some outrageous story about a rich businessman, or something else patently silly, but instead she simply laughs until she almost falls over. And she’s only on her second martini of the day, too. 

It’s contagious, in a way—you can’t help but crack a smile. A typical psychological reaction to the laughter of others in response to a joke one does not fully understand, in order to not feel left out.

When your mother says that she’ll tell you when you’re older, it’s your turn to laugh. 

-

When you are thirteen, you play a game. 

Your mother is playing as well, although you do not know it at the time.

You both lose.

-

When you are fourteen, you sit on a meteor and read terrible troll romance novels, and you cannot help but think that your mother would have loved them.

She’d probably get the covers framed and hung around the walls of your home, and buy stacks of them for you on every possible occasion, and you’d probably end up never reading a single one of them out of spite.

Oddly enough, the thought makes you smile. It is beginning to dawn on you that it’s possible your mother may have been more sincere in her affections than you ever realized. 

Another thought wipes the smile right back off your face: you don’t remember the last time you hugged her, or the last time you told her you loved her, if you ever did. You clutch the novel to your chest, rest your cheek against the top, and close your eyes.

-

When you are fifteen, you begin drinking. 

You like to think your mother would be proud.

It scares you to think that she probably wouldn’t be proud at all, and scares you even more to think that perhaps she would be proud of you—but _despite_ your mimicry of her mistakes, and not because of it. 

Your mother always kept trying, no matter how many times you rebuffed her, and that thought scares you most of all.

-

When you are sixteen, you think of the ridiculous party your mother would have thrown—there would be cake and presents everywhere, a car sporting an oversized bow on top, perhaps a large, lopsided, misspelled “SWEET SIXTEEN” banner. She would probably try to foist wine off on you, telling you that you’re practically an adult now anyway, sweetie, learn to live a little!

She might have even flown John and Jade and Dave out to your home. She was always prone to grand gestures.

Instead you spend your sixteenth birthday sober, listening to Dave’s awful birthday rap and wearing a beautiful dress Kanaya made for you and watching Terezi and the mayor desecrate your alchemized cake with colored icing. When you push them away so that you can blow out your candles, you cannot help but wish that your mother were here, drunkenly dancing to Dave’s raps, and wiggling her eyebrows at you and Kanaya while surreptitiously slipping you extremely embarrassing and passive aggressive sex advice, and making an even bigger mess of the icing than Terezi or the mayor could ever hope. 

When you blow out the candles and open your eyes, she is still not there. She is dead, her body lying on a castle far, far away from here. No amount of revenge against Jack will ever change that. Nothing will ever change that.

But you are happy, despite everything. You are surrounded by people who have somehow become your friends, and you are on a mission to win this game. You don’t know if you will succeed. You don’t know if your mother would approve of what you are doing. Despite the vast amount of knowledge you have always prided yourself on holding, you don’t know much of anything at all. 

But you do know one thing, and that is that despite your many mistakes, despite every misstep or error you have ever made, despite the fact that you were unable to save her, your mother would be proud of you. And nothing will ever change that, whether or not you feel you deserve it.

And so—if you have a choice—you might as well try to be someone who does deserve it, if you can.


End file.
